Like being home

For anyone that was worried, I did indeed make it to my intended destination today.  It is once again, midnight, and I am currently in bed in what will be my home for the next 6 weeks. (Props to my cousin's wife for insisting they get wireless internet since I have taken over their office for most of the summer). 

Here are a few thoughts I recorded over the last 24 hours of my journey....

            It took me the last few days to realize why my cousin Andrius was so concerned with the fact that I was stuck in Canada.  I told him that Laima and Ramunas live here, and not to worry, they’d take care of me. When his last text said he’d have a hot bath and lots of food waiting for me when I got to Vilnius, it finally clicked for me.  In my world, getting stranded in Toronto meant seeing family I don’t get to see very often and exploring a new city.  In his world, it meant 48 hours in an airport.  As Americans, there are so many things we take for granted that we don’t even know we take for granted.  I walked backwards through security despite the fact that the customs agent thought I was on my way to Germany and spent two days in Canada without a blink of an eye from a government official.  I can do that.  I am American. (It’s also possible that I just discovered a way to illegally immigrate to Canada).  My cousins would have spent a brutal night or two in the airport.  They need a visa to go anywhere.  At least now Lithuania is part of the EU, and the borders to most of their neighbors to the west in Europe have been opened to them, but not US.  It is a strange world of privilege we live in. 

            I’m always impressed with how poor security in the states is despite the fact that we started the whole “everyone’s a terrorist-fear, fear, fear” mantra among travelers.  I got through security checkpoints in the US and Canada without a second glance.  It wasn’t until Frankfurt that anybody questioned my knitting needles or travel mug (which, as the security agent showed me, is quite the suspicious canister in their x-ray photos.) 

            Employees in the Frankfurt airport get around by bicycle. It’s gotta be one of the biggest airports in the world.  I should look into that.  They also have smoking boxes, sponsored by good old Joe Camel of course.  It was kind of a sad and desperate sight to walk by.  I wonder what Skinner would have thought of the boxes. I am also quite impressed by the masses of people here at 8:15 in the morning, and among those people, the not small number of them that are drinking beer.  When I was 20 I would have thought this was awesome.  Now, it just makes me think too much.

            My bags were waiting for me in the airport in Vilnius.  I am quite relieved to be wearing clean underwear.